{"id":322,"date":"2003-05-09T18:43:21","date_gmt":"2003-05-09T22:43:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/2003\/05\/09\/on-communication-fads\/"},"modified":"2003-05-09T18:43:21","modified_gmt":"2003-05-09T22:43:21","slug":"on-communication-fads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/2003\/05\/09\/on-communication-fads\/","title":{"rendered":"On Communication Fads"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A standard electronic toolchain:  <\/P>
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thought<\/STRONG> –> interface –> software<\/STRONG> –> {recipients, repositories} –> thoughts<\/STRONG><\/FONT><\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
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I use simply threaded email programs for an amazing amount of interface & software, and simple web forms [with almost no interesting resultant structure] for 90% of the rest.  I’m not proud of this — and occasionally I know of a unique way to access  something I need (a piece <\/STRONG>of information, a view <\/STRONG>of past conversations I want to show someone else), and pay dearly for this simplicity of structure in lost time. <\/P>
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The way I think without focusing (directed, perhaps, by having grown up<\/STRONG> writing on flat pieces of paper and typing [o|i]nto similarly-shaped textareas), my thoughts come out a cluster at a time.  I figure out a second later whether that cluster is full of continuations and illustrations of a preceding train of thought, related free-association<\/STRONG>, new thoughts wholly unrelated to recent trains, a cusp<\/STRONG> of connections to be followed, more rarely an epiphany <\/STRONG>about a surrounding concept or related abstraction, etc.  <\/P>
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If I want to stimulate this kind of thought, I pace<\/STRONG>.  It’s amazing how different my thought process is when pacing then when focusing on a theme (e.g., while writing a post like this).  <\/P>
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The most efficient<\/STRONG> way I know of to lay such thoughts out, without losing anything, frequently shifting gears<\/STRONG> (between unrelated clusters), layering<\/STRONG> ideas as they take shape, involves pen and paper<\/STRONG> — a few different colors of pen and large sheets of paper.  Nothing I do electronically can come even close, no matter that I type 10X<\/EM> faster than I write, or that emacs<\/STRONG> effectively doubles this rate, letting me reuse and restructure things I’ve written in moments.  <\/P>
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Many wonderful things happen on paper.  I automatically differentiate different clusters with whitespace, borders, text direction<\/STRONG>, font and style and color; I use all manner of unusual images and symbols which come in no fontset and cross lines and clusters — long arrows and bars and diagrams<\/STRONG> and icons in the middle of text.  Tufte <\/STRONG>uses an example from a paper of Galileo’s in which he embeds a perfect description of a celestial observation in the space of three characters by drawing it.  <\/FONT><\/P>
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Also the smallest analog nuances<\/STRONG> of writing style reflect what kinds of thoughts I was having, allowing myself a day or month later to pick up on subtleties that the text alone wouldn’t convey.  But this is a quite different and delicate issue, difficult to overcome with crude input devices — even a too-thick or balky pen can obscure these details.<\/FONT><\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
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Other interfaces, word processors and email programs and blogging software, try to facilitate expression by making it easier and faster to write, edit, direct<\/STRONG> (mailing lists, RSS feeds) and interconnect<\/STRONG> (categorization, hypertext, blogrolls) one’s different clusters of thought.  The aspect they have a hard time with is capturing the original interconnectedness of ideas which are serialized<\/STRONG>, both for lack of non-serial interfaces, and for piecemeal consumption by others.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A standard electronic toolchain:  thought –> interface –> software –> {recipients, repositories} –> thoughts I use simply threaded email programs for an amazing amount of interface & software, and simple web forms [with almost no interesting resultant structure] for 90% of the rest.  I’m not proud of this — and occasionally I know of a unique […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[214],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetic-justice"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}